According to Coindesk, Wanxiang is seeking to fund blockchain entrepreneurs working on efforts that may be aligned with its objectives as a means to support this investment.

Feng Xiao, vice chairman, Wanxiang told Coindesk: “We can’t tackle all the use cases that might arise from the smart city project. That’s why we’re opening it up to use cases from all over the world.”

“We want to use Blockchain to manage IoT (Internet of Things), and use it help devices to interact with each other. Smart appliances can be managed with Blockchain.”

A global smart city opportunity

This is not the only recent global investment in smart cities.

The White House recently announced that it will invest another $80 million into technology and smart city projects.

The majority of the funds ($60m) will be used by the National Science Foundation on investments and grants for smart city projects during 2016/17 fiscal years, reports ReadWrite.

The investment will include ‘high-risk’ projects, healthcare technology and data research.

At the same time, the White House has discussed plans to expand its MetroLab Network – a group of partnerships between universities, local governments and research institutions with focus on smart cities – to include new partnerships.

The White House has also said that it will put greater effort into assisting the cities that want to become smart cities.

To do this, the National Institute of Standards and Technology plans to develop a framework for IoT-enabled smart cities, and the